How did people put up with Pan & Scan?

There are some people nowadays who even prefer the P&S original Star Wars trilogy over the extensively revised versions that Lucas has come up with since the late 1990s.

 

Exactly. I'd call pan and scan a necessary evil for the early days of home video. What was the average TV size back then? Maybe 19"?

 

19" might've been big for average!

I got into LD in 1991 and the biggest TV my family owned then was 15", I think. Maybe my parents had a bigger set in their bedroom, but I'm pretty sure the "family TV" was 15". I didn't care that the 2.35:1 image was small - I wanted to see "the whole picture"!

That fall I bought a 20" set for myself and it seemed HUGE! I actually tried out a 27" set and thought it was too big!

 

We went from a 19" set in 1983 to a 26" in '87, then to a 32" in 1992, and finally to 6o" in 2005. I bought the LD player in late '91 and from the outset I only bought films in Letterbox widescreen editions. Like you, I wanted to see the whole picture, and I didn't care how small the on-screen image was.

 

No, there aren't. Don't forget that the original trilogy came out in letterbox around the same time as the pan/scan. There are some revisions (1983 release), but not nearly as extensive as what happened in the 1990s.

Most people I knew in the late 1970s/early 1980s had at least a 25" set. 19" was relegated to the bedroom or a dorm room, and maybe a 12" set for the kitchen. All that's changed now. Hell, I have a cheap 32" Sony in my kitchen, and that used to be considered huge.

 

Okay, but I imagine your circle of friends at the time included a lot of well-off industry types and videophiles, right? That probably skewed your sample a little.

 

No, everybody I knew in the late 1970s was broke and struggling, just as I was, when I was making $250 a week as a sound engineer. Before that, I was a broke and struggling camera operator making $190 a week -- and I still was able to afford a Betamax and a color TV.

 

Yes, there are people on the LaserDisc Facebook groups who prefer the P&S 1983 trilogy over the 1990s revisions.

 

But why not just watch the widescreen "Star Wars" films that came out pre-1997? I have no idea why someone would prefer a P&S version of the OT over pre-1997 widescreen versions when they're virtually the same...

 

Why not watch the 1983 letterbox laserdiscs? Trust me, those exist as boxed sets -- I own them.

 

They do prefer the pre-1997 widescreens over the P&S pre-1997s but prefer the P&S OTs over the 1997 SE's. BTW, there is collectibility in the LD world with the 1997 SE LaserDiscs because they didn't make as many copies of the 1997 revisions on LD.

 

1983? What widescreen "Star Wars" was out in 1983?

I was under the impression this was the first WS release, and I believe it came out in 1989:

 

Naw, I'm almost positive there was a letterboxed version before that. There were all kinds of letterboxed transfers being done in the 1980s. Even that one was done before Lucas did tons and tons of digital VFX and editorial changes to the movie in the late 1990s.

Just found this website that details all the home video releases of Star Wars:

http://www.echostation.com/features/videoversions.htm

I'm positive the transfers were done in the late 1980s, but apparently you're right: they didn't see commercial release until 1992. If I believe this web page, there were no editorial alternations with these early-1990s versions and the 1983 reissues.

 

I've been on a fansite that is all about the original trilogy and I can tell you there ARE people interested in preserving P&S versions of Star Wars, even VHS versions like the 1995 "faces" boxset.

Not many, sure, but they do exist.

 

No, the OT trilogy was on LD by 1991. I know because I got my first player in 1991 and those were among the first titles I ordered free from the Columbia House LD Club!

Based on the little search I did, I think "Star Wars" and "Empire" were on WS LD by 1989 and "Jedi" was out in 1990.

I'm 99% sure the WS version I referenced was the first WS "Star Wars" LD - in the US, at least - and I'm 100% sure they were on the market no later than June 1991 since that's when I got 'em!

 

There was no choice back in the VHS days, so you either waited until the art house cinema ran the film you wanted (a little long) or you rented it on videotape. You had to invest in LD to be able to enjoy widescreen but the lack of titles and their prices were a big detriment.

 

I got mine in early '92 from Columbia House for $1.00 apiece as my "introductory" offer. BTW, I just picked up the Star Wars trilogy on DVD and as "Bonus Materials" they have the original theatrical releases in 2.0 stereo and wide-screen. Sadly, they are non-anamorphic, so I'll have to use the Zoom feature on my TV. I've done some experimentation with it on some other non-anamorphic DVDs and I found a setting that zooms in without distorting the image and just leaves black bars at the top and bottom, so that's how I'll watch them. Still, they'll look better than the LDs do on my 60" plasma.

 

That sounds about right. I thought it was before 1992.

 

It's insane that there are still so many movies that have never received a proper widescreen DVD release.

I have close to 5,500 titles in my DVD collection, and I've got them all catalogued online. So, just out of curiosity, I did a search for "full-screen" within my collection... and I got 114 matches. Now, that number isn't completely accurate... a few of the full-screen titles are there for a specific reason (eg. a widescreen version was subsequently released that I just haven't gotten around to replacing it with yet; or I do have a proper widescreen edition and am just keeping the full-screen disc as a "placeholder"; etc)... but that still leaves somewhere around 80 titles in my collection that not available on DVD in their OAR at all. Absolutely ridiculous.

 

Yes I saw that post!! ....all 3 of them were in total agreement!~

 

Actually there were some VHS widescreen releases. I did own several, but it was a while back, not sure of the titles now.

I know Star wars was one...( the first trilogy) and maybe terminator 2 ...dumped them as soon as DVD came out....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-T...escreen-Special-Edition-Episode-/251446665287

 

As I recall there were a couple of producer/directors who insisted that the VHS versions of their films be presented in letterbox. Woody Allen did it with MANHATTAN, and I think Spielberg insisted on letterbox for ALWAYS, THE COLOR PURPLE and INNERSPACE.

Harry

 

Fox, Sony and WB seemed to do a lot of widescreen VHS releases but those are definitely the studios that stand out. I remember Paramount had a WS version of Titanic on VHS, but don't remember many other Paramount titles, for instance. Unfortunately for my wallet, the only place that ever seemed to carry them here was Suncoast, and I'm sure we all remember their low, low prices. They did have a whole separate shelving area just for WS tapes, though.

 

Paramount definitely did have a number of widescreen VHS editions... I used to buy as many of them as I could get my hands on, back in the pre-DVD days. These are some of the ones I can recall owning:

Apocalypse Now
Indiana Jones trilogy
Braveheart
Deep Impact
Face/Off
Forrest Gump
Godfather trilogy
Mission Impossible
Patriot Games
Clear and Present Danger
Titanic
The Untouchables

Some of these titles were part of a "special" widescreen series that came with a postcard... they had a movie scene on one side, and facts/trivia about the film on the other. I've still got 8 of the postcards to this day... I kept them when I sold all my VHS tapes.

 

I made it a point to try and collect every domestic version of the original trilogy on LaserDisc in the last two years, and watched each one as I found them. The P&S versions weren't too bad, and took me back to when that's all we had to watch (I remember the excitement leading up to Star Wars first network broadcast in the early 80s!), but I wouldn't want these to be the preferred versions.